Free People Move - Episode 7: Alexey Komissarouk and Hacker Paradise

Elen Veenpere
|
June 23, 2015

For episode 7 of Free People Move, Elen sat down with Alexey Komissarouk,
co-founder of Hacker Paradise -
a traveling community for developers, designers and any other creative type
that is up for a bit of a working adventure.

We discuss Alexey's background and how he almost unintentionally became
nomadic by being born in Ukraine, moving to Israel with his parents where he
grew up and then going on to study computer science in the U.S. During his
three years in the military, he started his first company and got more and
more excited about getting into the world of startups.

Going into college, he realized there's not as much going on entrepreneurship
wise as he had hoped, so he took matters into his own hands and ended up
spending most of his time starting student organizations. During that process
he ended up building some great relationships, making connections and got
familiar with Silicon Valley.

Straight out of college, Alexey started a company with four other founders,
which ended up being a painful but enlightening experience – we talk about
how the whole ordeal brought him to want to take some time off and do
consulting for companies on his own terms to escape the stress.

During that period, Alexey ran out of his student visa and couldn't reapply
for it, which was a great reason to go traveling instead – he had clients who
were happy with him working remotely, so why not! We talk about his initial
plans (including Tallinn!) before he was offered to go to Costa Rica for
three months to run a group of traveling hackers and entrepreneurs – and from
that magical experience, Hacker Paradise was born!

We talk about the application process in case you are interested in joining,
about what kind of people Hacker Paradise is looking for and what they're
selective about when accepting people. Just a hint – if you're curious,
productive and constantly striving towards improvement, you're a perfect
match!

Alexey talks a bit about who they have in the group they're traveling with
now, what their joint activities are like (some serious boardgaming is
included), what a typical day in the group would look like and how being
involved is good for productivity and support when it comes to getting used
to working from different corners of the world.

We also discuss the different locations Hacker Paradise been to so far and
what the future plans are. And, make sure you stick around until the end
where, as a tradition, we ask about some issues he's come across while
traveling around and doing what he does that he wishes that someone would get
on ASAP. Happy listening!

As always, we're on iTunes
as well - sometimes it takes a bit to sync so if the latest episode isn't up
yet, give it some time!